


Drabbles

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for Orpsgod's birthday.</p></blockquote>





	1. Safe

When nights are dark, darker than they were ever meant to be, when the darkness seeps into him like molten wax, threatening to burn from within, he turns around in the dark, still asleep, his mind unaware of the cool, brown arms holding him fast. His unconscious senses are soothed by the soft tinkle of beads as braided hair brushes against his face, and caring lips gently smooth the lines away from his forehead. Frantic, warring dreamthoughts are coaxed into stillness beneath whispered words that thread their way into his mind like flickering flames to keep the shadows at bay.


	2. Desire

He doesn’t quite know when jade became the colour of desire. The greenness of a swelling wave makes him shiver with yearning. A winking emerald gracing a stranger’s earlobe makes him shut his eyes, his body humming with longing. When memory turns redolent with desire, the hot liquid spilling over his clenched fist seems futile, inadequate, arid. When lust transforms, becoming overwhelmingly, impossibly, achingly coloured with love, threatening to wrench his heart from his body before they are together again, he can only lie awake in the dark and hope the man with green eyes is thinking of him too.


	3. Black and White

Strangely, it is the ink-dark shade of kohl-rimmed eyes that he is reminded of when he looks at the hanged ones, their bleached bones glittering like unused chalk in the Caribbean sun. He turns his jade eyes away to gaze at the horizon, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. At such times, all the sea does not seem deep enough to drown his anxiety. Although he knows that Port Royal means death to pirates, his eyes cannot help searching for a graceful ship with dark sails, and he yearns to have her Captain safe in his arms once again.


	4. Time

The clash of metal against metal resounds like a ghastly, repetitive chime; the stench of gunpowder and blood tears into my lungs. The hideous moment in which I am forced to take another’s life crystallises into an undying memory. After the battle I am still breathing, forced to let the vileness sink in slowly, one torturous second at a time. Images of devastation splay before my eyes, my mind trying frantically to soothe itself with memories of kohl-rimmed eyes and precious, timeless moments of serenity, for the only one who can lessen the horror is too far away to reach.


	5. Magic

When her new lover kisses the palms of her calloused sailor-hands and tells her that they are the most beautiful hands she has ever seen, Anamaria begins to understand what Jack had meant when he had told her that he loved his lover’s hands. _Warm, holdable, beautiful, magical hands_ , Jack had said wistfully. Later, on the deck of the _Pearl_ again, she looks at her Captain’s always-cheerful hands and imagines them clasped in his Commodore’s elegantly-sculpted ones. After one night in the arms of a goddess, she feels she has glimpsed the magic that she has heard Jack speak of.


	6. Cartography

Jack’s body is a map, every tattoo and scar a new world explored by James’s wandering mouth and nomadic hands. Jack’s emotions shine like effervescent colours, as vivid as the taste of salt on his skin and the fragrance of the sea in his hair. James’s emotions burrow deep within him, like colours shadowed within white light. When Jack’s breath ghosts over his skin and Jack’s voice whispers his name, when Jack surrounds him, James finds his colours illumined one by one until the world is newer and more dazzling than ever before, as though it has just been born.


	7. The Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Orpsgod's birthday.

His work-weary hands unwrap the gift with care. The slim, green, clothbound book flirts softly with his senses as he raises it to his face and breathes in the faint aroma of sunlight and ocean spray, recalling the warming memory of golden, inscribed skin. 

He rests it on his lap and opens it gently, fingertips caressing the creamy, faintly uneven surface of the paper. The first page contains an inscription in familiar, firm, slightly ornate handwriting: 

_I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that you are not with me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack adapts a line from Shakespeare: ‘Oh god, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.’ ( _Hamlet_ II.2.252-253)


End file.
